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Interviews HR

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In this video, I answer a common question "How To Justify A Gap In Resume or Gap In Employment".

In this video, I will talk about whether this is something important that you should be worried about. And how to justify the gap in your employment.

So, is the gap in your employment really important? The short answer is Yes. In fact, it’s probably more important than you think.
It’s, in fact, a major problem. It’s one of those things that just kill so many opportunities before you even know about it.

Let me explain why I had to say that.

See, in an ideal world Hiring Managers, like myself, wouldn’t really care much about it. For me it’s all about skills, relevant experience, and character traits. Fairly simple. Even if you have a 2 year gap in your resume, as long as you have enough relevant experience and skills that are still fresh, there is no reason why I would care at all. And this is not just my opinion I know most of my colleagues here at PwC Consulting share the same view with me.
But this is what is important; we are hiring managers, we are actual practicing management consultants hiring for the role. We are not HR.
Now, that’s where the problem is. HR, unfortunately, eliminates a lot of resumes if there is a major gap in the employment record.

The reasons are two-fold
1) They want to impress the hiring managers with the profiles they present. Right? So, they don’t want to take a chance on someone who is unemployed and potentially lost all the skills

2) Because you have been unemployed for a long time, they think that you must have attended all these interviews and failed them. So, if you are unemployed for a year, then they think ok you must have had at least 20 interviews and you failed them all. Otherwise, why would you be unemployed? Even if you justify it in your resume somehow, they still most of the time don’t need to take that chance. They actually don’t have to take that chance because your resume is probably 1 in 1,000 resumes received for that role. So, what happen? This is what happens, your resume gets reviewed by the HR and immediately trashed. They won’t have the need to even get in touch with you to ask “hey why is there such a gap”. Immediately, trashed.

Then they make an analogy, and consider you as almost unemployable.